ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how writing skills become embedded when children have opportunities to practise writing in cross-curricular learning. It shows that how cross-curricular learning is supported by children's developing writing skills. During the writing projects, oral language development was seen as a priority and a prerequisite for children to become confident early writers. Children have to be able to talk a message before they write it; they need to be able to hold thoughts in their head and express them orally using increasingly complex grammatical constructions and a wide functional and creative vocabulary. Project practitioners devised different ways to support children's speech, language and communication skills. Reading and writing require directional awareness, and writing depends on hand-eye co-ordination, skills that are developed by moving the body through space, vertically, horizontally, forwards and backwards and spiralling. During the writing projects, children learnt that mark making and writing was important in many every day contexts as they developed their mathematical understanding.
